


as guest that would be gone

by lostlenore



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Japanese Mythology & Folklore, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-18
Updated: 2018-01-18
Packaged: 2019-02-22 08:31:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13163175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lostlenore/pseuds/lostlenore
Summary: “You’ve claimed him,” the King says. His voice is gentle, musical, and something about it raises the hairs on the back of Kei’s neck. “But can you keep him?”





	as guest that would be gone

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is inspired by a mix of fairytales, but particularly the Ballad of Tam Lin, and 百鬼夜行, the Night Parade of 100 Demons. Title is Emily Dickinson.

There is a man in the garden.

Kei startles and crushes the rose in his hand, feeling the thin pink petals tear. In the handful of days Kei’s taken to hiding here he’s never encountered anyone. The house on the hill has been abandoned as long as anyone in town can remember, grounds quietly overgrown and choked with weeds.

Kei looks again. The man’s still there, slouching against the crumbling wall, black hair stark like an inkblot in the midday sun. He grins at Kei, a lazy, almost feline expression, and gestures to the rose trapped in Kei’s fist.

“I would have given it to you as a gift,” he says, amused. “All you had to do is ask.” He takes a single, measured step toward Kei, then another, as if Kei is a deer he's trying not to startle.

“I didn’t mean--” Kei starts. He's heard this story before, in the children’s books Akiteru used to read aloud at night, in old wives tales whispered around town. Magic trickles down from the mountains, sometimes, and winds its way through the woods. And this man is magic--Kei’s never been this close to it before, close enough to feel the spark of it raising goosebumps along his arms.

“You’re not in trouble,” the man says, though his voice promises it’s only a matter of time. He’s near enough to touch now, if Kei wanted. This close Kei can see how fine his kimono is with its heavy brocade, can count the jewels that encrust the glittering rings on his fingers. He’s bright and beautiful, like a poisonous snake or an emergency flare. “Visitors are...unusual, though. I’m curious. What’s your name?”  

The man’s hand closes around Kei’s wrist. His voice holds all the gentleness of a king used to giving orders, and having those orders obeyed.

“Yours first,” Kei dares. His pulse is in his throat, beating rabbit-quick. Delay, delay, delay, until he can run. “I've never seen you here before--how do I know these flowers are even yours?”

“You don't. You'll have to trust me, I suppose, and trust begins with a name.” The man raises Kei’s hand to his lips. Kei feels the shock of it like lightning running through him. “Kuroo. Charmed, I'm sure.”

His lips are warm where he presses them to Kei’s knuckles. Kei can’t breathe.

“You’re crushing your flowers,” the man points out. His smile curls through his voice in a way that makes Kei shudder. A small rivulet of blood drips between his knuckles, where the thorns have scratched too deep.

“Tsubaki,” Kei says, latching on to the first flower he spots. The man's eyes narrow, as if he's realized that while Kei promised him a name, he didn't promise to tell the truth. Kei stumbles backward towards the gate, yanking his hand from the man’s grasp. There’s a smear of blood on the corner of the man's mouth, bright red against the pale curve of his cheek.

"What an incredible coincidence," is all the man--Kuroo? What kind of name is that?--says. He reaches out and plucks one of the dozens of camellias blanketing the garden in a riot of red. Their color matches the blood on Kei’s hand, the blood on Kuroo’s mouth. "Here, it suits you better than the rose."

He tucks the bloom behind Kei's ear, fingers light against the shell of Kei's ear. Kei runs. He does not stop to look back.

* * *

Kei keeps running until the forest thins enough for him to see the edge of town. He stops at the shrine tucked between the post office and the adult video store and washes his hands with purified water, sloughing away the dried blood.

The water washes away most of his uneasiness. Kei's heard it has power, like all waters born of the sacred spring that run down through the mountain and into the city. Cleansing, or so the story goes. 

Kei is inclined to take that superstition with several grains of salt, especially as he can still feel the ghost of Kuroo’s touch. The sensation just won’t fade, no matter how much he washes his hands. He still feels Kuroo's hands around his like a low-banked fire under his skin, threatening to flare up into something perilously close to pleasure.

"Absolutely not," Kei says to the stone dragon spout, which is judging him intensely. Kei ducks his head under, until sight and sound blur overhead in a dizzying blue-green swirl. Feelings, especially those regarding strange, possibly magical garden-dwelling men, are unacceptable.

He hides the camellia in the back of his closet, a touchstone he can return to on days when the whole thing seems like a particularly fevered dream: Kuroo’s lips on Kei’s hand, his fingers around Kei’s wrist, the way his eyes never left Kei’s face.

* * *

Once enough time has passed for Kei to convince himself that it was all a dream, he goes back.

There’s a reason Kei comes here to hide. The forest on the hill is a jewel-glazed emerald in summer, with shafts of golden sunlight filtering through the dappled leaves and filling the forest with the wet smell of earth. Kei takes his headphones off as he climbs, shedding the wind-up tension of the city like a snakeskin and relaxing into the smell of rain.

Kei can feel sweat running down his back by the time he crests the final hill and sees the garden spread before him. There are the twining blue-whites of the azalea and morning glories. The bright clumps of iris. Hedges bloom with gauzy patches of pink roses and blue hydrangeas, which spill over into trails of wisteria and, of course, the camellia.

Kuroo is there. He’s crouched in in the corner of the low garden wall, impossible to miss in his blood-red kimono, holding court over a small crowd of stray cats. He doesn’t look up as Kei steps into the garden, just calls out an idle, “welcome back.”

Kei presses his lips together, irritated.

“I didn’t know if you would be back, after last time,” Kuroo says, plucking a bored-looking calico out of the crowd of cats and tucking him in the front of his kimono.

“I wasn’t planning on it,” Kei says, “but the flower died.”

This is a lie. The camellia sits swaddled in a bundle of Kei’s dress socks in dewy, unnerving perfection. Looking at it is starting to raise the hairs on the back of Kei’s neck. But his words do finally get Kuroo to turn and look at him, with the full weight of his attention and a shit-eating grin.

“Did it now?” Kei could be a blind man, and the smile in Kuroo’s voice would be obvious as he leers at Kei. The cat pokes its head out of his kimono, and Kei has the feeling it’s judging him unkindly. “That’s interesting. It shouldn’t have done that.”

“I just said it did. Besides, this,” Kei gestures to the garden, “was my spot first.”

“Is that so?” Kuroo laughs, low. “I’m sure we can come to a mutually satisfactory arrangement.”

It’s only then that the strangeness of the garden hits Kei. Namely the flowers, which are blooming like it’s still the golden peak of summer, like the heat of August isn’t already splintering into cold September mornings. This is what he let himself forget, last time. There is a quietly sinister magic swirling under the garden’s surface, like the shadow of a fish in a pond. The feeling of it leaves his skin buzzing, a static shock that burns just slightly, determined not to be ignored.

Kuroo must see the way Kei’s spine locks, the way he freezes, like a rabbit caught in headlights. He slides into Kei’s personal space with a slow, deliberate step and clucks his tongue. “You haven’t greeted Kenma yet, it’s very rude of you Camellia-kun.”

Kei glares, forgetting to worry about anything else in the face of this fresh new indignity. The glare doesn’t even slow Kuroo down. “Don’t look at me like that, you’re the one that won’t tell me his name.”

He lifts one of the cat’s paws out of the kimono, like a westerner going in for a handshake. Kenma is supremely unimpressed.

“Nice to meet you Kenma,” Kei says, holding out his hand against his better judgement. It’s a common feeling, in his two brief encounters with Kuroo. Kuroo’s long fingers wrap around his wrist, trapping Kenma’s paw between them. Kei finds he’s having a difficult time holding any thoughts in his head at all when the pads of Kuroo’s fingers brush the delicate underside of his wrist. He can feel Kuroo’s heartbeat. His human heartbeat.

“Oh,” Kuroo leans in conspiratorially. “I think he likes you.”

Kenma continues to glare at Kei, like this is an indignity he must nobly endure, but all Kei knows is the touch of Kuroo’s hands on his, the heavy weight of his gaze, the way he smiles at Kei, like they’re sharing the same secret.

* * *

It’s not until hours later, standing on the train platform watching the sun paint the clouds candy-floss pink, that Kei realizes his wristwatch is missing.

* * *

This time Kei comes back in a matter of days, rather than weeks. He stomps up the forest trail, birds fluttering wildly out of his path, until he reaches the crumbling garden wall at the top of the hill. Kuroo is waiting for him this time, dressed in the same luridly red kimono. Kei wonders if he only owns the one.

“I wasn’t expecting to see you again so soon Camellia-kun,” Kuroo chirps. He looks nothing short of delighted. “Did you miss me already?”

“I missed my watch,” Kei says, which isn’t entirely a lie.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Kuroo says. He leans forward, chin in his hands like an overeager student. The sleeve of his kimono slides down to reveal Kei’s missing watch strapped to his wrist.

Kei moves into the garden uncowed. “The one you’re wearing looks an awful lot like it.”

“Does it?” Kuroo doesn’t even bother feigning surprise. “How about I trade you for it.”

“Let’s hear the terms first,” Kei says. He doesn’t love his watch that much. Still, he thinks, looking at Kuroo’s sly grin, buying another one would be a hassle.

“The watch, in exchange for one question, fairly asked and fairly answered.”

“Accepted only on the condition that I get a question in return,” Kei says. Kuroo’s smile transforms from sly to pleased. “You did steal it, after all.”

“Accepted,” Kuroo says. He holds his hand out to Kei, palm up, but his eyes never leave Kei’s face. Kei, who is expecting Kuroo to ask for his name, is unable to hide his surprise when Kuroo asks, “are you afraid of me?”

Kei pauses, his hands still midway through untying the strap of the watch.

“...I was,” he says eventually. He remembers the smudge of blood on the corner of Kuroo’s mouth, and the sharp sting of thorns. He remembers Kuroo holding Kenma’s paw out for Kei to shake, the echo of Kuroo's heartbeat in his fingertips. He'd been so terribly relieved, and, though he would never admit it aloud, a shade disappointed. Kuroo was human, it seemed. The tales of magic in the mountains were only tales, after all.   

“And now?” Kuroo says. His voice sends a shiver of something bright down Kei’s spine. Kuroo might not be the danger Kei first thought he was, but Kei can still feel something in the garden, something lingering just out of reach. 

“That’s two questions,” Kei says, and slips the watch free. The number of questions he has for Kuroo are endless: is he human? Is he more than human? How did he end up here? Why does just a brush of his hand against Kei’s spin Kei into dizzy daydreams?

“ _Should_ I be afraid of you?” Kei asks instead. Kuroo’s answering smile is all teeth.

“Not for the reasons you’d think. There are much scarier things than me lurking in these woods Camellia-kun.” He closes his hand over Kei’s, where he’s still holding the watch. “If you trust anything I say, trust in that.”

* * *

Later that evening, sitting on Tadashi’s back porch watching fireflies, Kei asks. “You know that old house, the one on the mountain?”

There has only ever been one house on the mountain in living memory. The local legends being what they are, Kei doesn’t think anyone else dares to claim it.

“Mmm. What about it?”

“Nobody lives there anymore, right?” Kei says. The glass of barley tea Tadashi’s mom pressed on him sweats in his hands.

“Not since Ukai-san left for Sendai, I think.” He doesn't ask outright, but Kei can feel Tadashi’s questions hovering nearby, unspoken.

“Right,” Kei says. “No reason. Just wondering.”

“Does this have anything to do with why the phone strap I gave you is suddenly missing?” Tadashi squints at something interesting in his tea, his voice terribly nonchalant. "Or where you keep getting these flowers from?"

Like Kuroo, there are times when Tadashi notices too much for Kei to be entirely comfortable. And...and now he's thinking about Kuroo again, and the lazy way he'd smiled at Kei when he'd had to run to make his train on time. It's a feeling that sneaks up on him at random points of the day, at work or on his commute, he'll feel that prickle of something across his skin and wonder where Kuroo is now, what chaos he's creating, if he's thinking of Kei too.

"No," Kei manages eventually. If it's a terrible lie, Tadashi doesn't call him out on it.

* * *

“You could’ve just asked me to visit again,” Kei says a handful of days later. He settles down in the thick grass, lets it whisper against his skin. Outside the garden the leaves are beginning to turn, the fields withering away to brown. Inside the garden the flowers are still as fresh and perfect as ever. Kuroo is sprawled lazily next to him on the grass, with Kenma dozing on his chest. Kei would, at gunpoint, perhaps admit it’s the tiniest bit adorable.

“Call it insurance,” Kuroo grins, twirling the phone strap between his fingers. The small plastic Godzilla whirls about madly. “Plus, it’s adorable. It looks just like you!”

“Is this you sweet talking me?” Kei grumbles. “No wonder you had to resort to a life of crime.”

“If I were sweet talking you, you’d know,” Kuroo says. Kei gets caught up in one of those glances where the air seems to burn between them, right on the brink of spilling over into into more than just a look.

He’s saved from doing anything rash by Kenma, who pointedly chooses that moment to cough a hairball into Kuroo’s lap before disappearing to sulk under the shrubbery.

“Don’t mind him, he’s not used to competing with anyone else for my affections,” Kuroo says, standing. He offers Kei a hand up, and Kei only hesitates for a moment before he allows himself to take it. There’s a pause, where Kei watches Kuroo visibly rethink what he’s about to say at least twice.

“Would you have come, if I hadn’t taken it?” Kuroo eventually settles on. He drops the phone strap into Kei’s hand. They’ve only promised each other one question, but Kei can see the second, unspoken question in the way Kuroo holds himself apart, searching Kei’s face for an answer Kei doesn’t think he’s ready to give.

“Maybe. You'll have to trust me, I suppose,” he says, making sure he’s busy tucking the strap away in his pocket and not looking at Kuroo while he says it.

“So cold, Camellia-kun.”

“Why don’t the flowers change?” Kei asks, changing tracks as quickly as possible. This is what he's here for, after all--the quiet thread of mystery that winds through the garden, that faint quiver of magic Kei can almost feel. “They don’t die, but they don’t bloom out, either. It’s like they’re frozen. And it's only here, in the garden…”

“Curiosity killed the cat,” Kuroo says, mild. There’s a sharpness to the otherwise lazy way he holds himself, though, that lets Kei know he’s onto something. “Explaining it is a pain. It might be easier if I just showed you.”

He links his arm through Kei’s, and escorts him merrily to the edge of the garden, where the gentle field gives way to the rough stone wall, and the dark maw of the forest lies not far beyond. It’s only as they near the wall that Kei notices the soft shushing sound around them, and the thin wet light reflecting off the leaves.

‘Is...is it raining?” Kei asks. He checks over his shoulder. The grass behind them is the perfect emerald green of a mild summer’s day. Kenma is licking himself under a rosebush in a position that should be physically impossible. All is as they left it.

He turns to Kuroo for an explanation and is caught off guard by his lazy, half-lidded smile. He pats the stone next to him in clear invitation, and Kei slowly lowers himself down, praying that the wall won’t crumble away beneath him. Now that he thinks about it, it looks much older than the house, and stretches endlessly into the growing afternoon dark.

“Try touching it,” Kuroo says, leaning back on his hands.

“I’m glad one of us is having fun,” Kei grumbles. “Stop making that face.”

“My face always looks like this,” Kuroo grins even wider. “You have to reach out past the wall to really feel it.”

Kei stretches his hand into the rain, which at this point is more of a fine mist. Water pools in the palm of his hand, a shock of cold in their oasis of endless summer.

“How?” He turns back to find Kuroo watching him, something sharp buried in his smile.

“Magic,” he says. “What else?”

Kei sits like that, a foot in two worlds, until his phone chimes in his pocket reminding him that he has a train to catch. He lingers today at the garden gate, and is rewarded with Kuroo gently taking hold of his elbow and steering him close.

“Did you need something?” Kei asks, all venomous sweetness. He can feel the heat of Kuroo’s hands through his sweater.

“I haven’t stolen anything from you yet today,” Kuroo says. He's looking at Kei in a careful, serious way Kei hasn't seen from him before. “I’m considering my options.”

And before Kei can even begin to think of a response for that Kuroo is kissing him, open-mouthed and devouring. It’s over before Kei can think to kiss back. Kuroo steps away, and all the air rushes back into Kei’s lungs so fast he’s dizzy with it.

“There,” Kuroo says, quiet in the surrounding hush of rain. “Come find me tomorrow and steal it back.” And then Kei really has to leave, or miss his train.

* * *

The next few weeks melt into each other in a blur of red and gold. Kei comes back, collects on his stolen kisses with interest, and lets his world narrow in focus to the hot, hard press of the earth against his back, the warm slide of red silk between his fingers. The quiet, prickling magic of the garden has always been a lure for Kei, but now there's this, too. He takes the train home now with a collection of dark-colored bruises tucked under his collar, the color of the camellia petals he keeps finding in his hair.

“Stop doing that creepy thing with your face,” Kageyama says, cornering him in the copy room after their department meeting. “It’s freaking me out.”

“I’m not doing anything,” Kei says. It’s true. He’s in a great mood, and even Kageyama’s brand of benevolent despotism seems bearable today.

“You’re smiling,” Kageyama hisses, like a vampire before a cross.

“It’s true,” Tadashi confirms later. “You’ve been humming. It’s a little bit terrifying.”

The two of them have squeezed into the sweaty booth in the back of Tanaka's Izakaya, which usually Kei would consider torture enough, except Tadashi’s apparently decided they’re having this conversation now.

He does at least have the mercy to pour Kei another cup of plum wine before he says, “You seem...happier, lately. It’s a good look for you.”

Kei considers drowning himself in his hotpot.

It’s not that he’s in the habit of keeping secrets, especially from Tadashi, but this thing with Kuroo is wrapped in the same thread as the mystery of the garden, and to expose one is to expose the other. Kei is still too selfish--it's his garden, like it's his mystery, and his carefully curated bruises from all the kisses Kuroo pressed into his skin.

"If you wanted to bring them by," Tadashi says, carefully, "you know they'd be welcome here, right? If they're important to you, you don't have to hide them." He looks at Kei, eyes wide and earnest. His freckles stand out even in the dim lighting of the bar. 

Kei crams his mouth too full of hotpot to be forced into talking about his feelings, and endures fifteen entire minutes of Tadashi’s gentle prodding while he works his way through the food.

"Fine," Tadashi sighs, once Kei has managed to dodge all his artful non-questions. “Don’t tell me.”

There’s a small frown between his eyebrows that Kei hates, because it means Tadashi’s hurt, a little, and is trying not to show it. Kei has worked hard these past few years to make sure he’s not the one putting that expression on Tadashi’s face anymore.

He carries their conversation into his next visit to the garden, tangled with Kuroo in the grass, watching the sky overhead split with rain that never lands.

“You know,” Kei says, in little gasps between slow, drugging kisses, “this might be more comfortable on a bed.”

Kuroo makes an approving sound. He’s found the spot under Kei’s jaw that makes his knees go liquid, and possibly his brain, too, because the next thing he says is: “come home with me.”

He wants to take the words back as soon as they’ve left his mouth. He can feel Kuroo go still against him, tension locking up his spine, and he knows, he knows, what the answer is going to be before Kuroo even opens his mouth to speak.

“I want to,” Kuroo says in a voice so gentle Kei feels it like a hand around his throat. “But I can’t. Not right now.”

“I see.” Kei sits up, unwinding himself from Kuroo, wrapping his arms around his knees the way Tadashi used to at recess, braced for a blow.

“Do you?” Kuroo says, sitting up too. He doesn’t try to touch Kei. “You saw the wall.”

“I did.” Kei stands up, dusts the stray bits of grass off his pants. The wall, the camellias, Kuroo himself—he’d known the answer to the garden's mystery for days now, though he's kept putting it off, pushing it away where he doesn't have to look at it just yet. “I have train to catch.”

Kei's been stupid. Once he'd solved the riddle he should never have come back. No, he shouldn't have come back at all. That was his mistake. 

“You don't understand-- _I can't_ ,” Kuroo says, standing and following Kei as he makes for the entrance gate. “I can’t leave the garden. I’ve tried; it’s impossible to get out.”

“I know,” Kei says, and Kuroo stills. “I figured it out.”

And maybe the reason Kei’s been waiting, through all their questions and sunlit afternoons, is for Kuroo to say what he isn't saying now: Kuroo is cursed. Kuroo is trapped. 

“Then why—” Kuroo starts, confused. _Why bother coming back, when he'd already gotten what he'd came for?_

Kei says, quietly. “A curse can be broken.”

Trust begins with a name, Kuroo had said, the very first day they met. He'd given Kei his name then, and it hadn't occurred to him that Kuroo might be lying too. That he might distrust Kei as much as Kei distrusted him. 

“No,” Kuroo says, flat and final. Kei jerks, surprised by the force in Kuroo’s voice. “I told you, up front: there are much worse things than me in these woods. I’m not getting you involved.”

Kei jerks a little, because that stings.  _If they're important to you, you don't have to hide them,_ Tadashi had said. And now the tables are turned; Kuroo is not the one being hidden.

Kei manages a protest, but Kuroo is on a roll now, and he ploughs past Kei’s objections to continue. “The Grand King won’t care that you’re interceding, he’ll punish you just the same. It will be violent, it will be cruel, and I refuse to let it happen.”

And oh, now Kei is _angry_ . “Why don’t you let me decide for myself what I’m willing to risk? You don’t tell me anything, you don’t _trust_ me—”  

Kuroo laughs at that, a sound that is short, sharp, and not quite human. It cuts through the stillness of the garden, startling a black cloud of crows from the trees.

Kei’s jaw snaps shut. He opens his mouth, shuts it again. _Trust begins with a name_. It should be so easy, only five syllables, but instead it feels like standing in a tiger’s cage, baring his throat. The moment passes and the words don’t come.

Kei goes home alone.

* * *

The camellias in the back of his closet are still as bloody and perfect as the day Kuroo picked them. Kei keeps watch over them, half expecting them to burst into flames at any moment, but they only lie there. Unchanging. All told, Kei thinks that might be worse.

* * *

It takes a week for Kei’s frustration to blow over. Kuroo’s words are rooted in his head, right next to Tadashi’s, where they flower into notice at inconvenient moments and prickle Kei’s carefully quieted sense of guilt. It's exhausting, suddenly, this realization that he cares. He wants Kuroo in an avalanche of terrible, embarrassing ways. Kei wants to bring him home so they can make out under the kotatsu. He wants to eat terrible Izakaya hotpot with him. He wants Kuroo’s regard, and worse, he wants Kuroo’s trust.

Except, when he grits his teeth and hiked up to the garden a week later, the garden is quiet too. There’s too much hushed green, and not nearly enough loud, smug red.

“Kuroo?” Kei calls, quietly at first, then louder when the only response is the flock of crows he startles out of a nearby tree.

Kenma creeps out from the shadows, looking lost.

“Where’s your uglier half?” Kei says quietly, reaching down to scratch Kenma’s chin. Kenma chirps sadly. “It’s not like he can get very far.”

He feels a chill of foreboding as the words leave his mouth. The garden stretches back as far as the eye can see. He could search for days with no guarantee he’d meet the end of it. And whoever, or whatever, punished Kuroo didn't kill him. They kept him tidied away in a quiet spot until they were ready. Ready for what, exactly, Kei shudders to think about. 

That night he dreams of Kuroo’s voice pleading with him to hurry, to help, while Kei crawls through the darkened garden looking for his glasses. He wakes up in a cold sweat, his breath coming in fits and starts.

It takes another week--five straight days of an empty garden and a lost-looking Kenma--before Kei breaks and calls Akiteru.

* * *

Kei waits until dinner is finished, and the dishes have been washed and dried to Akiteru’s satisfaction before he makes his request.

“What do you know about the Grand King?” Kei says, because subtlety has never worked for them before. That, and Akiteru would never guess what Kei actually wanted this information for. For that, he'd actually have to believe in something besides the crushing politics of academia. If anyone knows the story of the house on the hill, fact or fiction, it would be Akiteru.

“The Grand King?” It's clear from his expression that this wasn't the question Akiteru was expecting. “I thought you were too old for fairytales.”

“Humor me,” Kei mutters. He tries to avoid asking favors from Akiteru; the price is never worth it. 

After a production of shuffling papers and moving around several piles of impressive, old manuscripts, Akiteru emerges from the depths of his desk with a small, battered book, a remnant of a childhood obsession. 

“The Grand King appears in a lot folklore,” Akiteru starts, like he’s been dropped behind a lectern. He turns the pages of the fairy book so seriously that Kei rolls his eyes hard enough to feel a twinge.

“Spare me the entire thrilling prologue, if you will. I don’t have six hours to listen to it.” 

Akiteru doesn’t even spare him a look. “There’s a lot to sort through, he’s a fairly stock character. He’s got his name on everything: illusions and transformations, curses, hauntings--”

 _Hauntings?_ Fuck.

“Look for anything in the city. Local.” Kei’s voice wavers on the last bit, before he brings himself back under icy control. Akiteru looks up.

“Well, there's the Night Parade, but I think Ukai Senior started that rumor himself just to keep kids out of the woods.”

Kei feels cold all over. “Tell me about the Night Parade.”

Akiteru shrugs. “It's not much, but supposedly the Grand King rides through the woods along the North bank of the river with his court of a hundred demons. Sometimes it was every new moon, sometimes just the Fall Equinox, when all the high school kids would be up in his backyard drinking and trying to set off fireworks. Depended on his mood, I guess.” Akiteru shrugged.  

“Right.” Kei’s mouth is dry. Fall Equinox was next weekend. One way or another, he was out of time.

“You know how it goes,” Akiteru says, with a dismissive flick of his hand. “If you're a human unlucky enough to be wandering the woods after dark, well...”  

“Don’t leave me in suspense,” Kei drawls, trying not to sound like he's ready to rip the book from Akiteru's hands.

Akiteru rolls his eyes in a perfect mirror of Kei earlier, like Kei's being difficult on purpose.

“Kei, they’re demons. What do you think happens?”

* * *

The next day, Kei wakes up and thinks, _no_. No, Kuroo will not die in the teeth of the Grand King’s court. No, Kuroo will not keep Kei out of this. No, Kei will not be his brother, who lets his fear grow deep and rooted between him and the things he wants, who stopped believing in magic long before Kei did. 

He brushes his teeth, boards his train and goes to work, and at the end of the day Kei goes very calmly to the garden, sets up with his briefcase pillowing his head and his jacket folded neatly on the grass next to him, and waits. He could rage, or scream, or cry. He could rip the camellia bush out of the earth with his bare hands, and that clean, burning anger would feel _good_ , would feel like absolution.

Waiting is harder. He makes himself do it anyway, and is rewarded with Kuroo shaking him awake an undetermined number of hours later, his mouth pressed in a tight, unhappy line.

“You’re going to miss the last train,” he says. The evening glow has long since faded from the sky, and the first stars are visible overhead. His hand makes an aborted movement towards Kei, like he’s remembered that they’re supposed to be fighting, and he can’t just reach out and brush the petals from Kei’s hair.

“I’ll call a cab,” Kei says. “Are you done being an idiot?”

Kuroo makes a frustrated noise. “I told you, it’s too dangerous.”

“You also said you didn’t trust me,” Kei says, making sure to keep his face unreadable.

“I did,” Kuroo says, “so why are you here?”

And even after Akiteru’s story Kei wasn’t sure, couldn’t be sure, that he was going to do this until he finds himself opening his mouth and saying the words: “My name is Tsukishima Kei.”

He can hear Kuroo’s jaw click shut in the sudden swell of silence. His own heartbeat pounds all the way down to his fingertips.

“ _Kei,_ written with the character for _firefly_ ,” he says, wanting to be achingly, explicitly clear. He watches Kuroo mouth the letters, testing the shape and feel of them in his mouth, and feels a dizzy sort of adrenaline.

“I hope you’re not waiting for me to answer too,” Kuroo says, once he’s lost some of his stunned fish expression. “Our deal is off. I haven’t stolen anything.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Kei says. He takes Kuroo’s hand and puts it over his heart, feeling their pulses beating together, intertwined, steady and strong.

* * *

Akiteru was wrong. Kei doesn’t know why he’s surprised by this anymore, but he is.

“The alternative isn’t great though,” Kuroo says, still holding Kei’s hand captive. It’s awkward to sit like this, but Kuroo gets a mulish expression every time Kei tries to wiggle out of it. Eventually Kei decides it’s too much effort. Also, Kuroo has nice hands. Whatever. It’s not a hardship.

“The spirits like this mountain. It’s something about the springs; they’re drawn to it. I used to come up into the woods here and watch them,” Kuroo says, like its a completely normal thing to admit to.

Kei blinks. “You can see spirits?”

Kuroo shrugs. “Everyone who grows up here is a little magic.” When Kei opens his mouth to disagree he adds, “it’s in the water, _Tsukishima Kei_.”

Kei’s jaw clicks shut. Kuroo, magnanimous in victory, presses a quick kiss to Kei’s captive wrist and continues smugly. “Anyway. I used to come up here after school and looking for spirits, and I found one.”

“The Grand King,” Kei guesses, and Kuroo nods.

“Yeah. I think I surprised him. I’d gotten kind of lost, couldn’t find my way back to the trail, and I sat down to rest and fell asleep. Then I woke up and--I saw him.”

He tries to smile at Kei, though it ends up more a twist of the lips. “The Grand King does not like being seen, especially--I think he was injured.” The words tumble out in a rush, like Kuroo’s afraid he won’t get them all out in time. “There was a bandage around his knee, the left one, and I don’t think--I think that’s why--” Why he’s cursed. Why he can’t leave.

“He doesn’t want to let me go,” Kuroo says. “He doesn’t want me to tell anyone what I saw. And the Night Parade rides soon, up to the spring on the mountain. The Grand King will make me ride with them. I don’t know what happens once they get there--I don’t think it’s a place humans can go--or, if they do, I don’t think they come back.”

The night wind howls around the edges of the garden like a wild thing, and Kei shudders even in the warmth of the garden. It sounds like one of Akiteru's stories, the kind he and Kei used to read in summer when even the night air stuck to your skin, huddled in a tent in the backyard with the cicadas singing. 

Except Kuroo is real, his heartbeat loud against Kei's fingertips, and he's looking to Kei like he's bracing himself for Kei to take off running back to town.

Kei squeezes his hand, just once, and pushes his glasses up his nose where they've slipped down. "Tell me what you need me to do," he says. And Kuroo tells him how to fill up the hotsuki lanterns with well water to disguise himself, how to find the Night Parade in the darkened woods, and how to pull Kuroo from the river and hold him close, how to keep him and not let go. 

* * *

Kei follows the trail of red spider lilies sprouting up along the banks in the demon’s wake, his path lit by ghostly light of the crescent moon. Each sound has him jumping, blood roaring in his ears, and he stumbles toward the river clutching the lantern tight to his chest.

He’s followed Kuroo’s instructions: the lantern is already half full of water from the shrine, as pure and unsullied by humans as any water, apart from the waters of the spring, can be.

He ducks behind a thick wall of pampas grass at the bend of the river when he spots the tear-shaped hotsuki lanterns ahead, glowing softly against the black water.

This is it. This is the Night Parade.

The Grand King rides at the head of the procession, his brilliant red robes like a drop of blood in a river of pure white. He is beautiful to a degree Kei finds unsettling; it’s not just the marble smoothness of his features, but something in his air that sings on the wind like a dog whistle shrieking _danger_. As if Kei couldn’t tell the Grand King was dangerous just from looking--a pair of dark black horns curl from the crown of his head down to the crook of his jaw, though more than anything it’s the cold cruelty in his face that marks him as otherworldly.

He rides with a detached grace, a lantern strapped to his saddle, and Kei holds his breath with his heart in his throat until he rounds the bend past Kei’s hiding place and vanishes from sight. A river of silken banners stream after him--standard-bearers and musicians and a motley collection of monsters straight out of a child’s nightmare. Their white robes give them the impression of floating over the water like ghosts, invisible mounts beneath them churning the black water around their feet to white froth.

Whatever beasts they’re riding, Kei can’t can’t see them, only the soft firefly glow of the lanterns swinging on their bridles, throwing terrifying shadows across the surface of the river to suggest monsters to Kei’s imagination.  

There are hundreds of riders out tonight, and Kei’s legs are aching and stiff with cold before he spots Kuroo riding alongside a cluster of owl spirits on the far side of the bank, a red camellia tucked behind his ear.

Kei pauses. It _is_ Kuroo, but a version of Kuroo that Kei’s never seen before. There’s none of the warmth in him that Kei’s come to know, none of the sly humor. The perfect blankness of his face belongs on a marble statue, locked away in some dusty museum. He looks beautiful, yes, but inhuman, and so far out of Kei’s reach that he wants to scream.

 He could turn back, whispers a small voice in his head. He could turn away and leave, go home safe and dry, and forget all of this, scrub the mud from the hem of his jeans and try online dating. No one would know. At least, no one who wasn’t bound in eternal servitude to a faerie king would know.

The voice sounds suspiciously like Akiteru, and this more than anything moves Kei from his hiding spot down to the edge of the river, clutching the hozuki lantern to his chest like a lifeline. True to Kuroo’s word, the spirits don’t even seem to notice him as he struggles through the ice-cold water towards the procession, careful to keep the lantern dry and lit. The water rushes around his knees, dragging him sideways, and by the time Kei makes it to the center of the river he’s soaked and shivering, his hair plastered to his forehead with a mixture of water and sweat.

He’s nearly close enough to touch the soft, wavering lights of the procession when he stumbles, the rocky unevenness of the riverbed giving way to slippery silt.

Kei falls, and a hand shoots out and grabs him by the scruff of the neck before the current can carry him away. He turns to see his savior, a small spirit in a cat mask, the exasperated gaze familiar even behind the cover of porcelain and paint.

“Kenma,” Kei says, putting all his gratitude into those two syllables.

“Shut up and get on,” Kenma says, with a sigh like he can’t believe he’s doing this either. Kei wastes no time scrambling up from the frigid water onto the back of the...whatever it is Kenna’s riding. Kei thinks he feels feathers

"Thank you," he says, as they pick their way through a ghostly flock of birds, an enormous glowing snail, and what Kei suspects might be a radish. 

"I didn't do it for you," Kenma mutters, shoulders curling in. Kei's glad his back is turned so Kenma can't see the sliver of a smile he can't repress. It fades quickly enough--Kenma pushes his way through an entire obnoxious parliament of owls and there's Kuroo, riding with his gaze fixed steadily ahead, eyes glassy and unseeing. 

"Bring him back." Kenma gives him a helpful shove back into the water and disappears into a crowd of crows. 

 _You have to hold on tight, and not let go_ , Kuroo had told him. _It might be scary, but you have to remember that no matter what I look like, I would never hurt you_.

“Fuck,” Kei scrubs a hand over his face. It shakes, whether with cold or with nerves he’s not sure. “Here goes nothing.” He twists his fingers into the ghostly white fabric of Kuroo’s kimono and pulls him from his horse. Kei stumbles under his weight, trying to heave him over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and dragging Kuroo’s suddenly-limp body through the freezing rush of the river.

Kuroo is enviably unconscious for all this. Kei would be worried, but he can feel the rise and of of Kuroo’s breathing against his back, and the shallow warmth of his breath.

 Around them, the entire procession grinds to a halt as the spirits turn as one to stare at Kei.

“Human,” says a small spirit in a crow mask.

 _Human_.

The word ripples outward in whispers, like Kei is a rock dropped in the middle of a pond.

 _Human_.

Kei tightens his hold on Kuroo, the silk of his kimono slipping under Kei’s sweating palms.

“He’s coming with me,” he says, aiming his words in the direction of the Grand King. “I’m claiming him; he’s mine.”

It’s not true, exactly. Kuroo is only ever his own person, much as Kei might wish otherwise. But this is Kei making his decision: he wants Kuroo, with an intensity that surprises even himself, and he will fight to be able to keep him.

He waits. The King smiles, sharp and bloody, and Kei feels it like knife between his ribs.

“You’ve claimed him,” the King says. His voice is gentle, musical, and something about it raises the hairs on the back of Kei’s neck. “But can you keep him?”

From deep within the darkness a bell sounds a long, mournful note. Kei grips Kuroo tightly, feeling his blood sing with adrenaline, but between one blink and the next the procession vanishes.

The river is a hushed murmur around them, as Kei stumbles to the bank of the river without the light of the lanterns to guide him.

He makes it to the sandy riverbank before he collapses. Kuroo stirs in his arms, and Kei shifts so he can see Kuroo’s face.

He’s paler than Kei thinks he should be.

“Hey,” he touches Kuroo’s cheek, and bites back a scream as before his eyes Kuroo transforms, curling in on himself, shrinking into the mud of the riverbank. He loses Kuroo in the wet snarl of hair and claws.

A rat looks back at him, sleek and black, it's beastly red eyes flashing in the dark. Kei grabs it before it can scurry away into the tall grass. It writhes in his grip, twisting and shrieking, biting at Kei’s fingers but never breaking the skin.

 _I've just got to hold on_ , Kei thinks. Of course the Grand King wouldn't give Kuroo up so easily. He means to test Kei, to scare him, and Kei is scared. But he is resolved, too. He pulled Kuroo from the Night Parade, all he has to do now is keep him.

The rat ceases struggling, swelling in Kei’s grip to an impossible size, changing before his very eyes into a giant boar, with tusks that gleam under the pitiful light of the stars.

Kei is exhausted, wet, and shivering. He’s scared. He’s tired. His heart is beating sickly in his throat as he digs his fingers into the rough skin of the boar’s heaving sides and holds on for all that his life’s worth. The boar becomes a monkey, screeching and and clawing, a big black dog that with teeth that could rip Kei apart, a snake spitting and snapping, a ram with wickedly sharp horns, a tiger, big as a bus, and furious at being controlled.

Kei’s whole body is screaming at him to run as the tiger rages, opening its jaws to let loose a roar that makes the scared animal part of Kei’s brian quake in fear.

The soft, vulnerable skin of his throat pulses next to the tiger’s bared fangs. He swallows, and it’s almost painful around the hard lump of fear that’s caught in his throat. _You'll have to trust me, I suppose._ Kuroo had promised he wouldn’t hurt Kei, but Kei’s the one who has to make the choice in the end: to trust, or not to trust.

He swallows his fear, the tiger’s jaws pressing into his skin, and closes his eyes. He can feel the tiger’s answering growl like it’s his own pulse.

The tiger becomes a becomes a dragon.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Kei groans, dizzy with exhaustion and relief, as the tiger’s coarse fur gives way to a slick coat of scales.

The flames curl around Kei, licking at his skin. He shouts, but as Kuroo promised, the fire doesn't burn him, just presses against him, dancing across his skin, trapping him in flames like he's standing on the surface of the sun.

He’s so tired. The air is burning up around them, and Kei’s afraid that Kuroo will burn himself out, that there won’t be anything of his body left to save; he’d only ever promised to protect Kei, after all.

Just as Kei is skirting the edge of true panic, the fire burns away. The dragon twists in Kei’s arms, shivering and shedding it’s bright scales like the leaves of a ginko tree in autumn until it’s Kuroo standing before him, ghostly pale in his white kimono. His hair is tangled and wet, and his camellia is missing. He looks at Kei and frowns, a mirror of his earlier haughty coldness.

“Oh,” he says. His lip curls. “I didn’t think you would actually do it.”

Kei pulls back at the unexpected bite in Kuroo’s words.

“You should have left me,” Kuroo says, his eyes flashing red. “When I said I wanted to leave the garden with you, did you think I meant it? I keep trying to get rid of you, and here you are. Still clinging to me. I thought a kiss would put you off; I didn’t expect you to come crawling back for more.”

Kei hears the words as they pass through him, but his fingers are cold and stiff, and he can’t seem to make them move. He stands there stupidly, as Kuroo looks him over and says in that awful, cold voice, “disgusting.”

“--stop.” Kei can’t listen to any more of this. He’s shaking, or maybe shivering; his clothes are soaking wet, and the lonely light of the crescent moon makes everything about the forest seem colder.

“Let go of me already,” Kuroo says, and Kei turns away rather than look at him. Behind Kuroo the river is smooth and black, a peaceful murmur winding through the trees like laughter. Kei’s wan face stares back at him over Kuroo’s shoulder. “Your desperation is embarrassing.”

Except...it isn’t Kuroo’s shoulder.

“Give up already,” says the thing wearing Kuroo’s face. It’s eyes flash red. “Go home.”

“No.” Kei says.

“Let. Go. Of. Me.” The thing snarls, and jerks in Kei’s grip. The weak moonlight glistens around the crown of Kuroo’s head, revealing horns that curl towards his chin. The Grand King was certainly skilled at illusions and transformations--Akiteru’s books had gotten that much right.

“No,” Kei says again, more confident this time. “He trusted me not to let go.” It’s a heavy thing to carry, Kuroo’s trust. 

He’s not sure what to do with it except bear it as best he can, to fight and claw and struggle to be worthy.

The Grand King gazes at him from behind Kuroo’s eyes, red where they should be gold. He doesn’t feel so far above Kei like this. Kei could almost believe him to be the scared boy from Kuroo’s story--hurt, and snarling at anyone who gets too close.

“You should have stayed on your horse,” Kei says, and only has a split-second’s satisfaction of watching the King’s eyes go wide and shocked before Kei kicks his knees out from under him and sends them both into the river.

* * *

He wakes up with Kuroo’s mouth on his, pushing air back into his lungs, and promptly curls onto his side so he can retch pathetically in the weeds. Kuroo hovers anxiously, running his hands up and down Kei’s back, his face a sickly white in the waning light of the moon.

His eyes are back to their usual warm gold though, and Kei collapses on the bank in relief, ignoring the way the pebbles dig into his cheek. Even odds that the river flowed from the same sacred waters as the spring, that there was a reason the spirits rode through it rather than attempt the journey on foot, that the water wasn’t too diluted to lose it’s cleansing power. If Kuroo had tried such a stupid plan, Kei would have punched him. Kuroo looks like he might cry.  

“I didn’t let go,” Kei tries to say, through his chattering teeth.

“No, you didn’t,” Kuroo says, and there’s worry writ large across his face, but wonderment, too, blooming bright like the dawn.

* * *

The camellia in Kei's sock drawer finally gives up the ghost and withers sometime around Christmas, long enough that the hedges up and down the street are bursting with them, and Kuroo brings him cuttings stolen from neighbors and playgrounds and the fancy McDonald's two blocks over, like a cat depositing a dead bird at it's owner's feet. Kei installs them in the windowsills--the veranda's already filled with Kuroo's own pitiful garden. Turns out his wasn't the green thumb, but he stays stubbornly at it, slipping out of their shared futon on Sunday mornings to water the English ivy spilling over the balcony and coo at the stubby little jade plant he's trying to pretend isn't already dead. 

"Kuroo Tetsuro I will throw you back into that river, so help me god," Kei mumbles through his sleep when Kuroo crawls back under the covers, cold fingers and nose pressing into Kei's back. He can feel Kuroo smiling where he's pressing conciliatory kisses onto Kei's shoulder, the quiet hum of his laugh on Kei's skin. It feels, Kei thinks, as he drifts back into sleep, a bit like a fairytale after all. 


End file.
